Equivalent Exchange
by Flame.of.Ishval
Summary: Roy Mustang may have gotten more than he bargained for when he finds himself in battle with another alchemist. When one of his own is injured during the fight, he must decide what lengths he'll go to in order to save a life. (Additional chapters will follow.)
1. Chapter 1

**Equivalent Exchange**

Breathing hard, Roy Mustang unsteadily skidded to a stop on the slippery cobblestones at the edge of the road, and the rock darts that had been fired in his direction missed him by mere inches. He caught his balance and straightened up. He'd lost his usual air of superiority in battle, and was cursing under this breath. This attack had been much too close for comfort.

Roy gritted his teeth and braced himself to defend against another onslaught of sharp flying rocks. _He'd get this bastard before he could do any more damage!_ Their battle had already torn up a major road into Central, and heavily damaged several nearby buildings, and Roy had ordered his men to take cover to ensure none of them got hurt while he took care of this.

He snapped his fingers to create a spark to return fire, but in the split second before he could aim his attack, a new formation of missiles came his way and he was forced to duck and weave to avoid them. He returned fire with an explosion that wasn't well-aimed, but at least it was the enemy's general direction.

The other alchemist was easily able to dodge this sloppy attack, but by the time he came to a stop, Roy was prepared to go on the offensive. He'd finally gained a strong sense of his enemy's movements and his intuition told him in which direction the man would dodge. Another snap of his fingers, a spark, and an explosion, and the enemy was reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes. Roy would have liked to take the man back to headquarters alive for interrogation because he didn't know motive behind the attack, but it had been clear minutes into the battle that this wasn't how things would play out. At least now it was over and he'd been able to prevent innocent bystanders from being hurt.

Roy covered his face with his hand, trying not to breathe the stench of the burning body, which was both sweet and acrid as it carried across the road on the slight breeze. It would take him days to get that smell off his mind.

He was still trying to catch his breath and was just noticing for the first time the long but superficial cut across his right thigh, when Hawkeye's voice caught his attention from across the road.

"COLONEL!"

The urgency in her voice immediately caused Mustang to run toward her. He knew his Lieutenant. She was calm and calculated, and the faint tremble of panic in her shout unsettled him.

He rounded the black military car in which they'd arrived, which had been flipped onto its side and riddled with the enemy's rock darts so badly it had gaping holes in the doors and hood. He came to a sudden stop, his eyes dilating in terror at the scene before him.

Beyond the car, Riza Hawkeye was bent over the seemingly lifeless body of Maes Hughes, who was lying in a crimson puddle of his own blood, his back flat on the ground, arms outstretched. Even from feet away, Roy could clearly see two of the rock daggers in Maes' body: one in the left shoulder, just below the joint, and one in his abdomen, roughly at the bottom edge of the sternum where it would have lodged his liver or stomach, perhaps both.

Mustang rushed forward and dropped to his knees next to Hughes, flinging off his glove as he went. He immediately began to search for any signs that his friend was still alive. He fumbled for a pulse on Maes' carotid artery, horrified at the ashen color of Maes' skin and the pool of blood, which now stained his knees and seemed to be growing with each passing second. He found a very faint pulse under his fingertips, so thready he could barely feel it at all.

"Maes…. MAES!" Roy's heart was pounding in his chest and he was surprised to hear his own voice speaking the name out loud and with a trace of panic. His voice sounded very far away and all of his senses seemed to focus only on his friend, who was slipping away fast.

For just a second, Maes' eyelids fluttered and his eyes opened just enough to look up at Roy, but his pupils were fixed and didn't even react to the bright sunlight. His lips moved, but he didn't make any sound at all. Roy reached out a trembling hand to gently touch Maes' face and his friend's skin felt cold and clammy. Tears welled up in his eyes. _His friend was dying._

 _But he isn't dead yet_ , a small voice in Roy's head said with determination. He clenched his fists and said quietly, his voice steady despite the panic rising in his chest: "I can fix this."

"Colonel?" Riza's voice coming from beside him startled him; it was heavy with concern. She watched as he pulled his glove back on and placed his hands next to Maes' body, apparently in preparation to use alchemy to save his friend's life. "Sir … human transmutation?"

Roy looked up at her with his cold stare, his eyes blazing. "I have to fix this. I owe him." She stepped back. She knew there was no stopping him, no matter what the risks to his own life were, and she tried to find comfort in the fact that Maes was still alive, though barely, and that Roy wasn't trying to bring back the dead.

Roy Mustang carefully lined up his hands beside Maes and took deep breaths to focus and prepare for the task at hand. He had never performed any kind of human transmutation, nor had he ever made an attempt at healing before, save for the time he had seared a wound to stop the bleeding. He didn't know whether he had the necessary skill, nor did he know what price he would have to pay to pull his friend back from the brink of death. He only knew that he had to try, and if it cost him his own life, he was willing to pay that price, though he hoped it would be both quick and painless. He was relieved Riza didn't try to stop him.

He took another deep breath as he pressed his palms against the stones and focused every ounce of his skill and power into his alchemy. A bright blue light sprang up from beneath his hands, so different from the fiery sparks and flames he normally produced that he was startled. He redoubled his efforts to focus and the light circled around Maes' body, eating away at the missiles stuck in him and they began to crumble into dust and were carried away by the breeze.

Roy's shoulders trembled from the effort and beads of sweat had begun forming on his forehead. He now focused on stopping the bleeding and closing the wounds, which was both slow and difficult, but at last he saw the wounds start to knit together and seal. Roy knew this wasn't the kind of neat healing that Xingese alchehestry produced, and that he didn't do a particularly good job of things, but he hoped it would be good enough to stop death in his tracks and allow Maes to be taken to the hospital for proper treatment. A bead of sweat dripped from his chin onto the ground with the effort.

As he watched the wounds closing slowly, Roy allowed himself to breathe a very small sigh of relief. But then, all of a sudden, he noticed a change in the light and a very small, bright orange flame sprang up from beneath his right hand. It danced around his fingers and began to lick up his arm.

This flame was like no kind of fire Roy had ever experienced before and he felt no heat at all as he saw his glove slowly singe away. The flame grew, moving up his arm and spreading across his chest. With it, Roy was gripped by an overwhelming sense of dread. He knew that whatever happened next would be the price he had to pay to save his friend's life. As the flame snaked around his back, he began to feel the pain of being on fire. He gritted his teeth, blood now dripping from his face instead of sweat, and focused his last reserves of strength into his alchemy. He wasn't done yet and he needed to finish before he let the fire take him.

Roy gasped trying desperately not to breathe the smoke rising from his own body, when all of a sudden there was a bright flash of white light that overtook all of his senses. The last thing he remembered was the indescribable agony of being engulfed in flames, and the vague thought in the back of his mind that this is what he'd done to thousands he killed in Ishval. Then, everything around him began to turn black, and he knew the only thing left for him to do was to let death take his life in trade.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Maes Hughes woke with a start, his heart still hammering in his chest. He tried to hold on to the images from his unsettling dream to make sense of them, but it was like trying to hold water in a single hand. The only thing he remembered clearly was looking up into Roy Mustang's terrified face, along with a vague sense of fire. For a minute, he wondered whether he had been dreaming about Ishval, but the feeling seemed different and he could not remember ever having seen his friend look so frightened.

When his mind cleared and he was fully awake, Maes began to take in his surroundings. With confusion, he realized that the plain white ceiling and sand-colored walls were those of a hospital room. But he had no idea why he would be in a hospital room at all. Looking to his right, he saw a plain window with pale blue curtains and beyond it the bright sunny sky outside. Looking up, he saw an IV bottle hanging from a stand next to the head of his bed, dripping fluid into tubing that went to his right arm. His left arm and shoulder and his chest were bandaged. The last thing he could remember, however, was riding in a car with Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, and Jean Havoc, but he wasn't sure where they had been going or why.

 _Did we have an accident?_

He tried to shift to his right and sit up, but the pain was too much. He winced and lay back, trying to find some clue for what had happened by looking around the room. At the foot-end of his bed hung a clipboard, which he assumed contained his medical notes, but there was no way for him to reach it without getting up. On the opposite side of the room was second bed with another patient, but Maes couldn't tell whether it was someone he knew without sitting up or without his glasses. He wondered what had happened to his glasses. With his luck, they had either been lost, or they were in the nightstand to the left of his bed where he couldn't reach them.

Maes cleared his dry throat and said into the silence of the room: "Hello?" He hoped the other patient would be awake and would either be someone he knew or someone who knew what had happened, but he received no response. He sighed.

 _Of course. That would have been too easy._

Just then, the door to the room opened and a male voice that belonged to a blurry figure in a white coat said: "Just a few minutes!" Footsteps rushed past the voice and Maes recognized his visitors even before they were close enough to make out their features. Riza and Havoc.

"Hey, you're awake!" Havoc said, dragging one of the chairs to the bed to sit down. He held out a pack of cigarettes to Maes. "Smoke?" Behind him, Riza gave Havoc an exasperated look that made Maes smile.

"I think I'll pass," he said. "They'll kill you."

He immediately regretted his choice of words when he saw Riza turn pale as she glanced around the room, seemingly trying to find a place to focus that wasn't him. Her eyes fell onto the other patient in the room and a strange look flashed across her face, something between sadness and pity. It was an expression so unlike Riza. Maes was just about to ask her what was wrong when she turned back to him with a strained smile and said, "How are you feeling?"

He waved his right hand vaguely to indicate his bandages and the IV pole and said, "Sore. What happened?"

Riza and Havoc exchanged a glance. "You don't remember?"

"Sorry."

"What's the last thing you remember?" Riza prompted.

Maes thought about this for a minute, trying to summon recent memories and putting them into the correct order to the best of his ability. He remembered sitting in Roy's office, reading a case file, when the phone rang. After the call, the four of them had rushed to a car waiting at the front steps of the building, and took off for the edge of the city, but he couldn't remember what had happened next.

Havoc nodded. "That call was from the guards at the southern Central railroad station. They spotted a suspicious man getting off one of the trains and recognized him as a wanted deserter. When they tried to arrest him, he turned his alchemy against them, killing two and wounding a bunch of innocent bystanders."

"Headquarters dispatched Colonel Mustang to arrest or, if necessary, kill the man before he could cause more casualties," Riza added in a way that suggested she was repeating exactly what was written in the official report.

Havoc, who had lit a cigarette and opened the window in the meantime, continued: "Once we caught up to him, we quickly realized that guy wasn't going to be dealt with so easily. Riza shot him twice and Roy was still battling him when you were hurt." He indicated Maes' bandages. "Flying rock daggers the size of your arm."

 _He must be exaggerating_ , Maes thought.

"You were lucky. Colonel Mustang saved your life," Riza said, but it sounded more like an accusation than a statement. Apparently, the Lieutenant didn't approve of whatever it was Maes had done that required saving when Roy should have focused on the fight. At least that's what he assumed it was. Trying to change the subject, he said: "So, where is the bastard? Too busy to visit an old friend in the hospital?"

Riza fixed him with an icy stare that quickly began to soften when tears started to appear in the corners of her eyes. She turned around and stormed from the room without another word, slamming the door behind her. Maes stared at the door, bewildered.

Beside him, Havoc sighed and took a deep drag of his cigarette. "Man, was that ever the wrong thing to say. You just have a way with the ladies." He shook a cigarette from his pack and held it out to Maes. "You'll want this."

As Maes smoked his first cigarette in many years, Havoc explained what had happened when the four of them caught up with the deserter. It had been market day and the roads were packed with civilians on their way to buy and sell goods. When the four of them pulled up in the car, it was obvious that any battle on this road would result in nothing but unnecessary casualties, but the deserter had spotted them before they had a chance to pull back and wait for a better opportunity. Launching his stone arrows into the crowd and nearby buildings, he was hoping to make a getaway into an alley, but Mustang cut off his escape route with his flame alchemy. Riza, meanwhile, had tried to position herself for a clear shot, while Maes and Havoc were attempting to usher civilians out of the line of fire. Maes had been running back past their car to rescue a boy who had tripped in the street, when the blast of rocks hit both him and the vehicle.

When Havoc explained how Roy had saved his life, Maes remembered the terror in Roy Mustang's face he had seen in his dream. It hadn't been a dream at all. He covered his face with his hand. "That fool," he choked out, sobbing. "Why would he get himself killed for me?"

Havoc touched his shoulder, trying awkwardly to calm him down. "He isn't dead," he said gently.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Maes gently brushed Roy Mustang's overgrown bangs from his face and wondered aloud, for the tenth time in just as many days: "Why would you do such a foolish thing just to save _me_?" His voice sounded both anguished and accusing in the silence of the hospital room they shared, his inflection on the word "me" suggestive of the fact Maes didn't feel Roy had made a particularly good choice offering his life for his friend.

It had been a month and while Maes was up and about, trying to make the best of his daily visits with the physical therapist, Roy hadn't regained consciousness. In fact, not even the doctors were sure that he would.

 _The damn doctors_ , Maes sighed.

The doctors were not certain about much and regularly used the word guarded to describe Roy's prognosis. As far as Mae could tell, this either meant they still expected Colonel Mustang to die, despite the fact he was stubbornly hanging in there ( _Which was so very much like him!_ ) or it meant they simply had no idea.

Maes often felt the doctors had no clue about many things, including Roy's injuries. Although most of the burn marks that snaked up his arms, wound around his chest and back, and had crossed his face, acted like normal second and third degree burns acted, in some ways they did not. The doctors were baffled, for example, that none of Roy's hair was singed and that none of this uniform, except his gloves, had been visibly damaged by the flames. They were also baffled by how slowly the wounds were healing and how much they still oozed during bandage changes, even though there was no sign of infection.

As far as Maes was concerned, the doctors also weren't very helpful about his own prognosis, either. Although they'd told him that Roy's alchemy had undoubtedly saved his life, he noticed they had difficulty containing their disappointment about the _quality_ of the lifesaving, as well as the fact that they now had to operate ( _twice!_ ) to _fix things properly_ , though they didn't say so in as many words.

Maes' liver was healing well and the doctors assured him he would be just fine missing a large chunk from it – as long as he wasn't planning to take up heavy drinking. They were not so sure about his shoulder. Would it heal? Yes, eventually. Would it have normal range of motion? Unlikely. Would he regain normal feeling and movement in his left hand? Perhaps. It wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear, especially since his hand alternated between being completely numb and a painful pins-and-needles sensation, but the doctors assured him it was _healing as well as could be expected under the circumstances._

Maes sighed, trying to shut out the obnoxious beep-beep-beeping from the heart monitor next to Roy's bed.

During the day, a steady trickle of medical personnel (however unhelpful they were at times) and visitors kept him occupied, but when things quieted down after hours, like they had now, he couldn't help but remember seeing Roy's terrified expression he'd originally thought a dream. His heart ached every time. Worse yet, the uncertainty of Roy's condition made his insides glaze over with a feeling of cold trepidation.

He squeezed Roy's hand gently, yet again promising that no matter what happened, he would be there. The faintest of movements returned his touch, and for a minute, Maes stared in disbelief, wondering whether he had imagined it ( _and whether he was losing his mind)_ , but then he felt it again. Roy's fingers had ever so weakly closed around his own.

"Hey, buddy!" Maes managed to choke out, trying to sound upbeat while fighting back tears at this sudden sign of life. "It's about time you come around!" The cold fingers wrapped around his own gripped slightly harder at the sound of his voice.

"I'm right here," Maes said. "I'm not going anywhere." He watched Roy closely for any other signs that he was coming around. His friend's arms, chest, and face were still bandaged where the wounds remained fresh and raw, and it occurred to Maes that if Roy became fully conscious, he would likely be in a lot of pain, as well as disoriented and frightened. "I'm right here," he repeated because he didn't know what else to say.

Roy grasped his hand harder in response, and at the same moment, the heart monitor beside the bed began beeping warning tones as Roy's heart rate rose, sending a flurry of medical personnel into the room who jostled around the bed, pushing Maes away into the care of a surprisingly strong nurse who ushered him out of the room, pushing the door shut behind them. As she maneuvered a struggling Maes down the hallway into a waiting room, he could hear his friend's screams follow him, echoing off the tiled floors.


End file.
